London Road is a verbatim musical which documents the events of a shattered community in Ipswich by the discovery of 5 women's bodies in 2006. Soliciting had been a struggle on their streets for the residents of London Road for years. The show focuses on the residents of the street, rather than the victims or suspects close the the crime itself, and highlights how they managed to create a supporting community, where there had originally been none. The London Road in Bloom Competition was a way for them to come together after the awful events that had occurred and create something joyous, by working hard on their gardens. The show won Best Musical at the Critics' Circle Awards, was awarded 5-star reviews from multiple papers and magazines and has been adapted into a feature film which will premier in June 2015.
WRITING:
The writer, Alecky Blythe, set up her verbatim theatre company, Recorded Delivery, in 2003, and has been writing verbatim plays for many years. She was working on a play for the Royal Court called The Girlfriend Experience which was set in a working brothel. At the time of the murders on London Road, the girls working in the brothel explained how business was lacking because every customer would have been a suspect for the killings. Although what was happening in Ipswich was dealing with a different level of prostitution, Alecky was led by curiosity to discover anything she could about what was happening there, that she could then lead back to her current project, The Girlfriend Experience. However, when she started uncovering the extraordinary situations of the people living on London Road, Alecky realized that it had nothing to do with her current play, but was a completely different subject matter all together. So she kept all the information she had gathered and later went on to find out more and write London Road. She works in a rather precise way, entering communities, recording interviews with people and following a story. In the past, during rehearsals and in performances, the actors have listened to these recordings and copied exactly what they heared. The actors in her productions are not just copying what the interviewees have said, but also accent, intonation, coughs and stutters with incredible detail. It is common that in verbatim performances, the actors will have ear pieces in and will be listening to the recording at the same time as they perform, which is done to stop them from falling into their own speech patterns. However, London Road, being a the first ever verbatim musical, set out to abolish this trend as it would have been too much of a struggle to set it to music. Adam Cork, who wrote the music, believes that there is an issue with the word 'musical', as it has many implications of dancing, extravagance and amusement. Therefore, some people find the notion of using issues, much like those raised in London Road, as a means of entertainment, quite rightly, disgusting and unjust. For this reason, himself, Alecky Blythe and Rufus Norris, the director, had to be very careful to ensure they presented the matter respectfully and tastefully.
MUSIC:
Adam Cork, the music director for London Road, had the difficult, yet exciting task to translate the recorded speech into something musical. Cork explained to the Independent that he "wanted every line in every song to have the quality of a memorable tune" and "it to embed itself in the brain, almost like a commercial show-tune." This was done as a successful attempt to give the residents on London Road a voice and highlight the importance of what they had said. The composing of the music was an incredible challenge as Adam Cork had to follow the natural speech patterns and tone of the interviewees. If you listen to someone talking and your own speech, you'll notice how your voice naturally changes in pitch. This is what Cork had to translate into a melody, also notating each cough and stutter into the music. You can hear the way the person must have been talking in the way the actors are singing. The tone of voice can be, at times, very regimented, as though the character is trying to find the right way of saying what they're thinking, which is what gives the melody a very speech-like quality.
Listen to these two songs 'London Road in Bloom' and 'Everyone is Very, Very Nervous':
- Notice how on the line 'I've got a couple of um... baskets' at 51 seconds into the song, the melodic line lowers in pitch on 'baskets'. This is interesting as it follows the way people naturally move down in pitch towards the end of a sentence.
- At 1:52 in the song, the change in pitch of the character's laugh is incorporated and notated into the melody. It's fascinating how something like that can sound so natural in a song, yet really stands out and brings you back to the reality that what you are listening to are the exact words of a real person.
- At 1:24 on this song the policewoman is singing. By the way her voice goes up in at the end of a phrase, you can hear and compare this to the tendencies of Police men and women's speech patterns, and how they are stereotypically known to talk.
- At the end of the song, Adam Cork has highlighted the pitch of a police siren in the way the performers sing the word 'very', which builds it up to a dramatic climax and creates a tense atmosphere, reflecting what is being discussed in the lyrics 'everyone is very, very nervous'.
What resulted from composing London Road's music, was that Adam was forced into using his whole imagination to create something that would work musically. He experimented a lot with ideas and techniques in the first week of production, refining his way of tackling it. Adam started off by simplifying it down to where there was very little melody, setting the material as it presented itself, without imposing any repetition, and restricting himself by not allowing himself to change any of the notes of the speech. He discovered that this was not the most effective way of composing something intriguing and powerful, and therefore allowed himself some freedom with the material he was given. Adam did, however, stay very close the the natural rhythm of the speaker's voice, ensuring not to alter that or stray from it. He also retained the 'up and the down' of what was being spoken, although, he would allow himself to change the notes in the speech slightly to fit the harmonic material which made the most sense in the context of the song. This freedom he gave himself enabled him to create choruses and verses with the material.
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